Technical Field
This disclosure to 3D virtual reality (VR) experiences programmed on mobile touchscreen devices such as tablet computers.
Description of Related Art
Stereoscopic 3D displays date back to the 1830s, when Charles Wheatstone built the first stereoscope, later improved by David Brewster and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Holmes stereoscope was extremely popular in the second half of the 19th century, and could be said to be the virtual reality (VR) of its day. In 1939, the View-Master was introduced, and became the most widely used stereoscope for most of the 20th century. The first stereoscopic head-mounted display (HMD) was built by Ivan Sutherland in 1965, but it wasn't until the 1980s that any handheld stereo VR display appeared. The BOOM™ by FakeSpace in 1991, U.S. Pat. No. 5,253,832, the entire content of which is incorporated herein by reference, was an early example of handheld (or head-coupled) VR displays.
Virtual Keyboards: Virtual keyboards, such as the on-screen keyboard on smartphones, have something in common with the idea we are describing, in that the lower part of the screen is used as input for the upper part of the screen.
Hasbro™ my3D™ (stereoscopic smartphone attachment): The my3D™ has thumb holes at the bottom which allow limited and fairly awkward interaction by tapping the touchscreen display.
The devices above used to consume stereoscopic VR experiences exhibit certain limitations:
(a) HMDs require a separate computer for rendering and displaying graphics.
(b) HMDs require separate means for tracking the user's head position and orientation, through the use of external mechanical, magnetic, or optical sensors.
(c) HMDs require external sources of input (such as keyboards, mice, and joysticks) in-order to control and interact with the immersive VR software.
(d) An HMD's limited field-of-view is a combination of optical magnification power and the distance between the user's eyes and the lenses.
(e) HMDs force users to attend exclusively to tasks in the VR environment, and inhibits the user from performing other real-world tasks.
(f) With HMDs, the user is immersed in a display that entirely fills his/her visual field, blocking out their actual physical surroundings and isolating them from the real world.
(g) HMDs attach to the user's head by means of a head band, which is difficult to customize for every head shape and hairstyle.
(h) Smartphones have the computational power to render and display sophisticated computer-generated graphics, but have limited screen space to do so.
(i) Smartphones with touchscreens can receive user input via finger touch, but fingers can obscure the user's view of the screen if attached is a stereoscope that envelopes the entire screen of the smartphone.
(j) Smartphones with attached stereoscopes are capable of receiving user input that does not interfere with the user's view of the screen, but only if an external source of input is used (such as a wireless keyboard).
(k) Stereoscopes for smartphones such as the Hasbro™ my3D™ envelop the entire smartphone, isolating the other useful features of the smartphone from the user.
(l) External sources of input occupy coordinate systems that are different from the coordinate systems of the display (the direction of “UP” on a joystick is different from what is “UP” inside an HMD or smartphone, which is disorienting for the user).
(m) All stereoscopes, whether they are HMDs or stereoscopes for smartphones, force the user's eyes to focus on the visual experience, which forces the user to rely on the sense of touch to find external controllers.